Sending a Christmas card from Lörby, the village where I grew up ... and I do it in English. Are several reasons for the choice of language ... one is of course that I want to test your knowledge of English!
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(2 in the map 2010.03.30)
"Vegetable cultivation under plastic in Lörby...It´s looks like snow
before the vegetables have started to grow under the plastic cover.
Then, they lift up the plastic so the wind comes in... and the entire field resembles a billowing sea.
.."








Nah, just kidding ...
I can´t speak English, but just as many of Sweden's population, I understand a lot (would probably be bad otherwise ... when we read it in school since we were 8-9 years old and most of the movies on TV are in English).

One reason is that I have relatives in the U.S. for one year ago (though the truth is out, I had relatives there long, I just have´t known about it) ...

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(1 in the map 2010.03.30)
"Wind Turbines in Lörby (2010.03.30).
Now there are at least two more..."








Allt för Sverige ... a little criticism
Another reason is the TV program "Allt för Sverige," shown on SVT 1 in this autumn. It is about ten Americans seeking their Swedish origin, in the same time - as they travel across the country to visit the place where their ancestors once lived! – it´s an ongoing contest ...
where those who lose are forced to leave the program.

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"The map... brown ring = the place the foto was taken!






The winner of the whole thing will be reunited with their Swedish relatives ...

They has managed to put together a group of interesting personalities (and I suffer with them when they lose). Places they visit are beautifully filmed and would fit in to the visitor at any time ... but it was that about the genealogy.

Would not really hurt if they showed a little more of how they proceeded when the ancestral tablets research was presented ... because I can promise that there is a great interest about this!

Don´t forget that a third part of the Swedish population emigrated to the U.S. (or about 1.3 million people) ... so we are really many who have relatives across the Atlantic.

"The Great Escape from Sweden" began after several years of bad harvests in the 1860s and continued until World War I (1914-18) ...

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(2 in the map 2011.02.22)
"At the far end (about 10 000 meters away) is Ryssberget
with the great beechforest. The "mountain" is 150 meters high.
"







Another thing that should be mentioned is Enskiftet in the early 1800's. It is the agrarian reform that has been formatted how Sweden looks today. This was when village were blown and people were forced to leave the land their ancestors farmed since ancient times and move out of the village with their farms ... to a place they did not choose, and to an uncertain future. What a job it since was to move their farms (maybe 300 meters) will not go to even imagine.

New roads were drawn in with a ruler on the map ... and who has not surprised at the the nail straight roads in Sweden?

Indirectly are also Enskiftet an explanation for why so many left Sweden ...


Lörby before Enskiftet ...
Lörby is a very old village. There have been grave finds which date from the early Iron Age (500 BC k - 500 k e). As almost all old villages has been triangular (with the tip of the south and base in the north) before Enskiftet.

Lörby had twenty home (then as now), who each had two - at times - three patients.
The farms were small, very small and were close tightly in a group (blue triangle on the map). The residential buildings had usually only a fireplace, cellar was rare ... and plots were rarely fenced. Maybe they had a fruit tree which they counted as theirs ...

There were even some who cultivated tobacco, and these cultures were carefully fenced, even with stone walls (tobacco production was an easy way to raise money for the tax).
Around the group of farms was lots of small fields, fields that everyone in the village was a partner in the various parts. This was a way for the village to spread the risks, for hit the cultivation faults in a field was hit everyone equally hard.

The village had a selected alderman who called the village's co-owners to the meeting when something should be done, for example, when a field was sown or harvested.

Soils the farms lay on had previously owned by a large goods and was rented by the user, in that he did day labor of the landlord. It was not until the end of the 1700s it became permissible for farmers to buy their rental farms ...


Lörby triangular? No, just as little as any other village in Sweden today ...



To be continued...